Category: black entrepreneurship

Black Middle Class:The Problem with Black Business Movements

The Black Empowerment Project raised a very valid question, one that has yet to be responded to, nor answered by any of the Black economic movements. That question is how do we achieve Black economic independence? Now, the question suggests the answer. The answer is, by build Black economic intradependence and independence. But, all the Black economic movements completely fail to even formulate a plan to encourage Black economic independence.

Now, Dr. Claud Anderson, in his powernomics movement, had a very sensible idea, but it shared the same limitation as the Marcus Garvey movement, it had a singular focus in one product, albeit a very good one. Dr. Anderson wanted a vertical monopoly: fisheries, transportation, restaurants. Garvey wanted ships for transport and cargo.

African American Manifesto: My Black Agenda for Millennium 2000

[I am touched that you wrote me. I have been planning to start a Black business bureau for some time now. I have not written out the plan, but this seems as good a time as any. This letter will not only go to you, but I am now, because you inspired me, will be sending this out to every Black church, Black politician, Black organization in the entire country. I can dedicate a few thousand to this letter and campaign. I am also an online marketing genius and will be doing a major press release of this letter as well. Thank you for inspiring me. Here’s my response to you.]

When African slaves were sold or stolen from Africa, they were first sent to an island just off the coast of west Africa. On this island, they were mind-wiped and the men were brainwashed against the women. For, 95% of Africans were sent to central and south America. In central and south America Africans could hope to live the ripe old age of 23. However, they actually were treated quite a bit better, since they learned skills. However, because their death rate was so high, they never grew in population.

Well, what about that 5% that was sent to America? Because the US had a constitution that said “all men are created equal”, Americans went overboard to make sure Africans were never seen as humans. They went through TWO different mind-wiping sessions. One off the coast of Louisiana, and a 3rd at the auction blocks. However,they were treated with kid gloves, compared to south America. However, they were kept as dumb as rocks. They learned absolutely nothing and it was forbidden to teach them anything, by law. Americans were deathly afraid they would revolt, which actually happened several time, but was kept to just that city. One town was completely slaughtered by Africans. There is even a famous painting about it, however this is not taught in public education.

When slavery was abolished in the US, Africans had been able to live to a much higher age than in south America and grew to be 30% of the population. However, these Africans had been mind-wiped 3 separate times, stripped of religion, origin, family, and culture. Upon their release they knew nothing, literally nothing.

Africans had to teach themselves how to read and write, make a family, farm for themselves, etc. Two things they could not teach themselves: their religion; their cultural origins. Even with these horrible odds, Africans became 80% literate in 50 years, something unheard of in human history.

While there were Africans that flourished in the new free era, most barely got by. A lot were slaughtered by racist white people who saw African freedmen as an economic threat to their livelihood. Many new laws were passed to keep tools out of the Africans hands; minimum wage laws were passed to keep people from hiring Africans; and anything produced by Africans was not allowed to come to market. Many African farmers went under from not being able to sell their produce.

The answer is not a question of just pouring money into the modern African American community. It requires a COMPLETE overhaul.

– branding: African Americans need to be branded as a viable and independentpoliticalgroup with our own identity, culture, religion and origin from Africa

– BRANDING: we need to produce new art, media, entertainment that if Pan-African, African centered and African inspired, with Africans as the only people in such media [THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ALL OTHER POINTS]

– we need to denounce any and all other groups that try to co-op our history, culture and art, who systematically claim it as their own and as their origination [like the Egyptian story; jewish story; our music; our culture]

– as a political group we need to acquire and send lobbyist to every state legislature and the federal congress, to lobby for African political and economic gains [NOT CIVIL RIGHTS]; we need things like the war on drugs stopped, which was intended and used as a racial profiling thing to send Africans into the prison system, to the tune of 75% of all Africans in prison today are there based on drug charges, to the tune of a $75 BILLION a year price tag; we need to remove all racist legislation; we need to understand, read and hold politicians responsible to the constitution, which is our best and only way to eradicate racist legislation; we need to remove Africans off of all social welfare legislation, this has destroyed the African family

– as an independent political group we need to divorce ourselves from the Democrat party; if we are serious about our independence we need to have the capability to vote as a group; voting for the Democrat party has made the Democrats take our votes and voice for granted

– we need to control African finance and African money; we need to open and gather in every city African run, operated and owned credit unions; we need to aggressively educate and finance African business; we need to arrest and stop any 3rd parties that are financing and control African business

– we need to control all African disposable income and spending; we need to arrest and stop any 3rd parties that are selling commodities in our communites and to Africans in America

– we need to control all African necessary expenditures, this includes food, energy and real property; we need to arrest and stop any 3rd party that controls necessities Africans have to pay for

– we need to go into our communities, move back in, fix them up, and open up all forms of business that Africans need and use on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis; we need to target and pick locations that have high concentrations of Africans already in them and do our best to move out 3rd parties; we need to open up convenience stores, credit unions, grocers, transportation and everything else needed, in each community so that Africans do not need to go outside of the community to spend money.

– we need to start regional stock markets that trade in African produce, commodities, and equities in African firms; this will get African farmers to produce and transport their produce to African stores as one big giant economic circle

– we need to connect these regional stock markets with stock markets in the motherland, which are now booming and coming online; 2 new major stock markets have come online recently in Africa and they need more business

– we need to understand that marriage is the most stabilizing social factor in our modern time, and we need to encourage our community to get married at every opportunity; marriage also is very strategic and economically good for both people; we need to launch a national campaign to encourage Africans to marry each other; we need to put African marriage in front of our people, through pictures, art, music, entertainment and as a sound business strategy [since it is more economic to be married]

– we need to purchase and take private, all historically Black Colleges; we need to control all African education; we need to arrest and stop 3rd parties from mis-educating our African youth, young adults and young professionals; this is exactly what all other groups do; we need to open and start vocational and skill based education for high school and young African adults; we need to access and encourage our youth to understand what they are good at, what they desire and to realize that college is not the answer for nearly 60% of the population; we need to educate our youth that colleges are a business and that they are putting out propaganda that you “should” go to college, in order to rake in money, at the young African’s expense, which they’ll be paying for, for decades; we need to encourage our young African to develop skills, such as automotive, electrical, plumbing etc, for blue collar paychecks, instead of minimum wage

If we are to survive this next century, we need to take some serious stock of what we are doing. We need to realize that, unless we get organized and think of ourselves as a group, we will be treated as chattel, misused, miseducated, and state dependent victims to a socialist state, with our wealth stolen year after year.

As it stands now, Africans in America cannot do anything to protect, save or help our countries in the motherland. Our people are being raped, murdered and wealth stolen by nearly every western power on the planet, and now Asia is getting in on the taking. We need to clean our house and get it in order.

Why Black Wealth Was Destroyed Under Obama

[This post is in response to Mike Green]

From the research and the conclusions, that said researchers have drawn, these are the factors and causation of plummeting Black wealth.

Historic Factors:

Blacks of all economic classes lumped in with high risk loans, i.e. the Black middle-class given grade B loans, as if they were derelicts or of menial credit rating [Well’s fargo testimony in open court sheds light on this, when whistle-blowers testified that Wells Fargo management said, “target Black neighborhoods with high interest loans because Black people are financially unsophisticated”.]

Blacks pay highest insurance premiums than whites

Blacks pay higher costs for nearly every good and service, from food to housing, than do whites

Causation and Decimation of Black Wealth

when the bubble crashed and ARM loans adjusted, it imploded 65% of all Black wealth

Blacks have nearly no assets. And, what little wealth they do have is nearly 100% tied to their primary residence [which is NOT an asset, but only a sophisticated investor or someone financially educated would even understand that]

Why Obama vs Bush

in spite of his own advisers telling him to specifically target legislation at Blacks, Obama took a mass appeal role, which ultimately would nearly 90% only affect white people, not Black people

all legislation that took place to placate or help homeowners stay in their homes, occured in the latter half of the default scale, which affected white people more than Black people

institutional racism reared its ugly head, even after Obama and friends commanded private banks to cease and desist foreclosure procedures and directed them to work with their lendees. Blacks were denied every opportunity to renegotiate their loans.

this occurred on Obama’s watch, regardless of similar circumstances happening during the bush administration.

Please note that everyone that was predicting the crash said that the crash actually started 2001 – 2002, not 2008.

Nouriel Roubini or Nassim Taleb, as well as Peter Schiff & George Soros, correctly predicted the housing bubble collapse, which then exposed a much deeper bubble (a super-bubble in Soros’ terms) that was the entire solvency/credit trap that has taken over and the failure of 30 years of economic policy. Black swans in Taleb’s language can not be predicted. Both he and Roubini correctly predicted that said market was built on sand and would eventually collapse, but neither one of them got right precisely when it would happen (they both thought in 2003).

That squarely puts the entire Bush administration as having been handed this crash and dealing with it for two terms, not the revisionist history notion that everything was peachy during the Bush administration and he handed Obama a sack of pissed off badgers.

This latter part is what people constantly get tripped on. They all believe that Bush dealth with nothing financial for 8 years, until the very end.

Need I remind you that it was Clinton’s policies, demanding everyone be a homeowner, that led to the bubble during the Bush administration?

And, speaking of Clinton, everyone believes the propaganda that Clinton handed Bush a surplus. Just as fake as today’s jobless / unemployment numbers [which I hope you’re aware of] Clinton’s surplus was a complete fabrication, made-up by upping the intra-governmental holdings while paying down the public debt.

He handed Bush, every bit of a deficit as Bush did Obama and Bush sr did to Clinton before him.

Bush also dealt with a housing crash as the beginning of his administration. People forget these things. He dealt with the dot com bust, also.

Obama has been abysmal for Black wealth and makes absolutely no apologies for it.

As to the dearth of Black Americans in high-groth entrepreneurship, [or from my perspective any entrepreneurship] having any connection to job growth is only indicative of a lost potential of wealth that COULD be generated. That is a completely different discussion, than the one at hand.

Yes, Black enterprise is completely lacking and a direct correlation can be drawn between its lack and negative impact it has on Black wealth and Black “jobs”. At 1 in 36, versus 1 in 236 entrepreneurship of whites vs Blacks, no one can deny that Blacks are completely missing the economic boat [hell, we’re out to lunch completely].

However, this post is dealing with what wealth we have or had, presently.

Blacks lost 65% of their wealth during the Obama administration. The single largest drop in the history of the entire United States, including during the slave era. The 10%-20% of Blacks that were free during the slave era had more money, than all of the free Blacks right at this second.